Yusuf Abdulla

Yusuf Abdulla, a skiddy left-arm fast bowler, made his first-class debut for KwaZulu-Natal in February 2006 and was included in a Rest of South Africa squad to take on Pakistan despite playing only three first-class games. He made the South Africa A squad for the tour of India in 2007 and impressive performances on the domestic circuit led to his Twenty20 debut against Australia in 2009, where he took 1 for 16. A stroke of misfortune to West Indian fast bowler Jerome Taylor - a vehicle accident - gave Abdulla a break in the IPL. He was signed up as a replacement by the Kings XI Punjab franchise for the 2009 season. It turned out to be a really smart move as he topped the wicket charts midway through the tournament and his feats earned a call-up to the ICC World Twenty20 squad. Punjab handed him a contract the following season for $50,000.

He is from a Muslim family and grew up in Lenasia, a largely Indian suburb in the south of Johannesburg. He spent some of his high-school career in Gauteng, before his family moved to the coal-mining town of Dundee in KwaZulu Natal (KZN). At 18 he was selected for the KZN academy and taken under the coach Yashin Ebrahim's wing. He spent his time with the Dolphins priming himself for the big time. After a solid 2006-07 season, in which he took nine wickets at an average of 12.00 in the Pro20, Abdulla was picked as one of 20 amateur players to attend the national academy based at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria.

His performance in the season that followed was testament to his hard work. In the 2007-08 season he took 10 wickets at an average of 13.40 in the Pro20. Besides being the Dolphins' main strike bowler in the shorter form of the game, Abdulla also refined his Twenty20 technique. He learnt to disguise his slower ball well, and to fire it in fast from a low and wide angle outside the off stump. However Abdulla is in danger of being typecast as a Twenty20 specialist since he had only one first-class five-wicket haul by the end of the 2008-09 season
Cricinfo staff May 2009